Somalia

Debate between Laura Sandys and Alun Michael

Thursday 9th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s speech and his enthusiastic engagement with these issues. He is being very ambitious, and I applaud him for that. I also applaud the Secretary of State for International Development. He has visited Somaliland, and so, too, has the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham), the Minister with responsibility for Africa. I wish them well in their endeavours. I roundly applaud the energy that is being put into the British engagement in Somaliland and Somalia.

I also congratulate the shadow Foreign Secretary on his contribution to the debate. When he was International Development Secretary, he took a great interest in this subject, and that came across in his speech. He met the Somali community in Cardiff, as did the then Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband). There has been a Somali community in Cardiff, in the docks area of my constituency, since about the 1830s. It is now a community that is passionately committed both to Wales and being British, and to Somaliland. I shall talk about that shortly.

The Foreign Secretary highlighted the issue of security. That sometimes comes very close to home. In just the past few days, three men from Cardiff have appeared in court on terrorism-related offences, and I believe that they will be sentenced today. Only a few weeks ago, two young men from Cardiff went to Kenya with the intention of travelling across the Somalia border to join al-Shabaab. Fortunately, they were detained and returned. That is a positive outcome for them, as well as for the community in Cardiff, which, with strong Somali leadership, realises that it has to engage more with the young people growing up in the city and ensure that the temptation of being drawn into terrorism is guarded against. A recent Home Affairs Committee report on radicalisation in the UK is of relevance in this regard. I mention these events as they underline a point that the Foreign Secretary made: security in Somalia is not just about what happens in the horn of Africa and to ships sailing in that region. It can also come very close to home.

The Foreign Secretary stressed security and common humanity as the twin motivations for this fresh engagement. That is absolutely right, but we must also add development to the list.

Unless the vacuum is filled by jobs and opportunity, education and improved health standards in these fragile regions, any gains that are made will be temporary. Military intervention alone is not enough to change the situation in the south. There is also a need to develop democratic institutions. As I shall make clear in a moment, that is one of the big differences between the situation in Somaliland, which wishes to be separate, the situation in Puntland, which wants to be part of a single Somalia, and the situation in the south, where those democratic institutions are lacking.

[Laura Sandys]

As the right hon. Gentleman will know from his experience of the Somali community, in all the chaos and difficulty that Somalia faces we should not lose sight of the fact that Somalis are extremely entrepreneurial, and have a fantastic sense of business and international trade. While there are few positive things to say about Somalia at the moment, we must bear in mind their potential to use such assets to enforce and underpin long-term security for the country.

[Alun Michael]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and I am glad to say that those characteristics are reflected in the Somali community in Cardiff. One of the problems of that community, however, is that it is invisible. In recent years, we have organised an event to celebrate Somalis who have achieved some success, such as gaining a PhD in chemistry or developing a proficiency in art or sport, in order to encourage and motivate young people. I am certain that such skills exist even in the most disastrous parts of Somalia, and will be evident if they can only be nurtured and developed through proper institutions and a degree of stability that is absent at the moment, particularly in the south-central part of the country.